An American in Cairo

Turkey Travels...

2009-08-02T11:47:00.002+03:00

Here are two pıctures from Bodrum, Turkey, where I am currently backpacking around with my girlfriend.

I will do a full recap of the trip once I get back to Cairo and get some downtime.

Giza Zoo - A Cultural Experience

2009-05-30T16:52:00.001+03:00

A few months back (yes, I'm still that behind...) two of my fellow interns and I visited the Giza Zoo. Here are some pictures from that trip.

It will soon be very apparent that I just downloaded an image framing program and I love playing around with it. The raw power of these lions is palpable, even when they are locked up in such horrific cages.

From this angle, this rhino looks kind of small. It was not.

FEED ME!

I won't get into the animal cruelty issues here, since its been said many times before (google it), but using the horse pen as a garbage dump is cruel and very sad to see.

The day we went to the zoo, there was a huge party atmosphere and the place was completely packed.

No one knew why there were so many Scream masks at the zoo.

WHY ARE YOU RUNNING IN THE ANIMAL HABITAT?

This was absolutely the highlight of the trip. COME SEE THE FEARSOME WOLF DOG! This exotic, fierce animal turned out to be...

...this! A house pet. It had an area covering more than all of the lion cages combined! I've been in Cairo for nine months now, but things like this still make me stop and scratch my head.

New Cairo Campus in HDR

2009-05-09T18:34:00.001+03:00

Here are some shots of AUC's New Cairo Campus, where I work, in full HDR.

AUC Library

Sky view from my office's balcony

School of Humanities and Social Sciences

View across the courtyard from the balcony next to my office

Cairo's Friday Market

2009-05-07T11:11:00.005+03:00

Welcome to the Friday Market!

Need a severed camel foot? You can get it here.

Need a new, colorful comforter? Get it here (although it might smell like a camel foot).

Need a specific faucet head to match your sink?

In case you get hungry, there's always...lunch?

Need a new toilet from the garbage pile in the street? Everything has a price.

On January 16, a friend of mine and I went down to the weekly Friday Market in Islamic Cairo. Held in the middle of the City of the Dead, it is a market where you can find nearly anything you want (as long as you aren't looking for something made more recently than 1974).

He didn't seem to mean too much harm with this gesture...

Check below for some HDR images from the Friday Market.

Cairo's Friday Market in HDR

2009-05-07T11:10:00.002+03:00

See above post for info and non-HDRs of the Friday Market.

Here is a steamroller that I came across while wandering around the market - it looks considerably more impressive in HDR.

The first in a series of HDR images of the horrifically unsafe Egyptian amusement park-esque rides for kids.

These would certainly fail every safety check in many other countries.

I don't even understand this one. It looks like a very tiny, very dangerous Egyptian take on the ferris wheel.

Cairo Bar Crawl

2009-05-02T18:18:00.003+03:00

A week or so after climbing the tower, my friends and I decided to go barhopping in downtown Cairo.

I was dismayed after reading this article, so we set out to determine if there was still a legitimate downtown bar scene.

The Baladi Bar website shows a variety of choices for bars downtown, of which we picked three to check out.

The first place (seen above) was nice, mainly for its history and location (right on one of the main streets and corners in downtown Cairo), but it looked more like the cafeteria of an insane asylum (think Cuckoo's Nest, minus Nurse Ratchet).

Dinner and a dessert

Window display on the street between the first and second bar

Our second stop was a "bar" called El Muriaz. I put that in quotation marks because it can only be referred to as a bar in the sense that it was an enclosed space in which alcohol was served. Upon entering, we were led upstairs, to what can only be described as a brothel for 60-year-old men. I don't think I need to explain why I didn't take pictures inside. We tolerated the horrific "karaoke" (of which we were expected to tip, of course), the 40-year-old overweight dancers and the Dutch-Egyptian businessman with terrible breath, but what we couldn't stand was getting swindled on the bill.

For twenty minutes after we asked for the bill, we watched them try to figure out how to rip us off. When the bill came, the beer was more expensive than it was in the nicest places in Cairo, and on top of that, there was a curious $5 charge for "TORISM." After some vehement protesting, we paid about a third of what they initially wanted us to pay and finally escaped.

Still a little shell-shocked from that cultural experience, we headed off to our favorite downtown bar, Horreyya, to finish off the night well and joke about the ridiculousness of El Muriaz.

Climbing the Tower

2009-03-29T19:15:00.000+02:00

Frustrated from not being able to get on top of a building in Zamalek, I packed my camera into my bag for work and set a plan in motion for January 8. After work, I traversed the ongoing construction site that is AUC's sports facility and made my way to Mobinil Tower (seen below).

Flashing my staff/faculty ID at anyone who raised an eyebrow, I reached the tower and began the slow climb up the spiraling stairs to the top. Upon reaching the top of the stairs, I was confronted with a locked door and a sketchy ladder of tiny metal rungs (seen below).

Looking down the sketchy ladder

Not one to give up after all that effort, I grasped the first rung and started to pull myself up. At the top I had to stretch to reach the next landing, and I only had the briefest moment where I was hanging above a whole lot of nothing before I was back on solid ground. After that it was a few more metal rungs and I found myself above the highest part of the wall. The aerial view of the campus was certainly worth it.

The colorful outdoor recreational courts

Looking down on the central part of campus

Great view of the soccer field

Looking out on still very much undeveloped New Cairo

Descending required a little bit of cleverness (Mom, stop reading and skip to the next part), as I had to hover over the gap and blindly reach for the ladder with my foot, but other than that, it was smooth sailing. There was no brilliant sky or sunset to capture but it was great to see my workplace from a different perspective.

Zamalek at Sunset

2009-03-20T01:25:00.002+02:00

By special request (and the fact that these were the first set of pictures I had not yet posted) here are some more pictures of Zamalek, the residential area where I live.

A few months back, I had gone about ten days (since the Dahab trip) without taking a single picture, so I was starting to get a little restless. On January 7th, a friend and I set out just before sunset to try and sneak up to the roof of an apartment building or another high point in Zamalek to get a better angle during the fading light. Unfortunately the bowaabs (doormen) were not having any of it and so we were confined to ground level.

Taken from the bridge connecting Zamalek and Agouza/Doqqi, looking South down (technically up!) the Nile.

"Let's go down to the waterline..."

This is actually looking from Zamalek across to Doqqi/Mohandessin on the other side of the Nile.

This...is probably a dead body. I'm just saying...

My favorite picture from this photo expedition.

More to come soon.

Back in Action - New Macbook

2009-03-20T01:19:00.002+02:00

Two weeks ago, my dad came to visit and with him came my brand new MacBook Pro.

Specs include a very fast processor, lots of RAM, a built-in camera, the ability to run both mac os x and windows through boot camp, and not having to store said computer in the fridge when not using it (which I actually had to do for my old computer!).

Now that I've got the tools, I'll start putting up the backlog of pictures that's been building up since January.

P.S. Unrelated but awesome - for all the Daft Punk fans out there, you will be addicted to this site - http://www.najle.com/idaft/ - for an unnecessarily long time.

Hello Strangers!

2009-02-19T20:07:00.003+02:00

Before anyone jumps on me for failing to update the blog consistently in the past month, I’d like to get my excuses in order. First, my laptop is dedicating all of its resources which were once used for photo editing, blog-writing, and web browsing to its ultimate goal of kicking the bucket in the most prolonged, dramatic way possible. It started with blue screens of death, and then progressed to screens of death in every other hue and shade imaginable. Thankfully, a shiny new laptop is on its way to Cairo, and the photos from a handful of recent adventures will go up on the blog when it does.

In addition to this, I also had somewhat of an insane work schedule these last few weeks – I had to write speeches for something like 15 events on campus to celebrate the inauguration of our new campus and the 90th anniversary of the university. This increased workload meant a decrease in travel and photography adventures, but I do have some photos from around the city.

While I can’t post new pictures of my trips around Cairo (and I really wish I could, I have some great shots of freshly severed camel hooves for sale in the Friday Market in Islamic Cairo – NO JOKE), what I can do is link to two “photo tours” I made recently and put on picasaweb.

First, there's the walking tour from my apartment to downtown Cairo.
A lot of people have misconceptions about the Middle East - many are influenced by Hollywood's vision of the Middle East as only small rural villages that alternate as terrorist training camps, and think there are no paved roads or skyscrapers and that the entire region is thousands of years behind. Not true. Parts of Cairo, of Egypt and of the Middle East are much more developed than people expect. Unfortunately, that also means there are plenty of McDonald's and KFCs here.

I probably came in more open-minded than most as a result of my previous travels, but I was still a little surprised. But Cairo does that in a way - it surprises you as being both more modern and more ancient than you would ever believe before setting foot in this fantastic city.

You can find the photo tour here:
Walking Tour to Downtown Cairo

Second, here is the bus photo tour of the ride home from the New Campus out in the desert to my neighborhood here:
Driving Home From New Cairo

Finally, if you look to the left sidebar of this blog, you'll see that I've put up some links to my selection of pictures on Flickr, my pictures on picasaweb, and my old blog.

Enjoy!

More HDRIs from Dahab

2009-01-25T20:58:00.001+02:00

Dahab Part 3

2009-01-24T17:49:00.002+02:00

After snorkeling, we hung out on beach chairs for a few hours while the waiters tried to sell us absurdly expensive drinks and food. I eventually got bored of my book and decided to hike up to the top of the nearby ridge.

This was an actual inscription in the wall of memorials of people who died at the blue hole while scuba diving. “Have a fun dive!”

This is an HDR of the small rock tunnel/crevice I climbed through to get up to the top.

View from the top of the ridge. The blue hole is over the first small ridge on the right.

That night we went back to “Quickly” for dinner and I had delicious shrimp and calamari spaghetti. After a great time in Dahab, we had no idea we were about to get on the bus ride from hell.

We boarded the bus at 11 pm and settled in for a nice night of sleep, but for the next 8 hours we were subjected to 3 full length Arabic musical movies being blasted at full volume. This, combined with being shoved into a tiny bus seat for 8 hours, made for one of the longest nights my life. All of that rest and relaxation that we had stored up from the trip dissipated in the loud cold bus.

Shot out of the window of the sunrise while we were coming into Cairo

When we finally got to Cairo, the bus driver dropped us off in Heliopolis, which is on the opposite end of the city from where we live. Immediately off the bus, weary travelers such as ourselves were faced with taxi drivers pulling bags out of their hands and yelling, “Taxi!? Taxi!!” in their faces. From experience I know that they only grow more insistent when ignored.
Rob and I pushed out way out of the bus station and then started walking down the street, bags in hand. Once we were far enough away from the station we got a taxi back to the dorm, arriving at 7:30 AM after a long night.

Dahab Part 2

2009-01-24T17:48:00.003+02:00

The next day we woke up late and had a typical Egyptian breakfast – fuul (mashed beans and lettuce inside pita bread), but it was more expensive and not as good as it is in Cairo.

We signed up to go snorkeling at the Blue Hole, outside Dahab, so we piled into the back of a covered truck (think smaller World War 2 army transport) that reeked of gas fumes and took an adventure-filled ride up the beach.

It is kind of hard to see from this picture, but the road was a lot like a dirt racetrack with banked walls and rock obstacles, and the driver was gleefully banking the car into these walls as he zipped along the beach. This continued for quite some time even though there was a PERFECTLY GOOD, FLAT ROAD 20 feet farther inland. But we decided this was part of the experience.

After about half an hour, we reached the very Euro-touristy Blue Hole. It is incredibly popular among Europeans, which meant a prevalence of man-thongs. Avoiding these as much as humanly possible, we got our snorkels and fins and jumped into the not-so-refreshing December water. I know I’ll get some flak for complaining about the cold because of what everyone is going through at home right now, but the water was not exactly bath temperature.
The snorkeling was great; there were a lot of the same types of fish and coral that we saw in Nuweiba (since it’s only a few hours north of Dahab).

I ran across this guy on the beach and snapped a few pictures.

He was mid-chew when he looked towards me inquisitively.

Dahab Day One

2009-01-17T14:15:00.003+02:00

I apologize for not updating the blog recently, I’ve been quite busy with work and I don’t know if anyone has noticed, but there is also a small war currently going on in the region. Another note – my blog has been getting spammed with comments linking to websites with clothing sales and stuff so I had to change the commenting restrictions. I hope this doesn’t prevent anyone from being able to comment. Anyways, on to the updates.

Christmas in Egypt was incredibly strange because it was almost like it never happened. My friend Rob and I had decided we didn’t want to sit around for the time we had off from work so we planned a December 26-29 trip to the Red Sea town of Dahab, on the Sinai in Egypt.

On Christmas Eve we went to get our bus tickets for the 26th, and on the way back explored a part of Cairo we had never been in before. We stumbled across a “local fast food” place where we got delicious 15-cent falafel sandwiches that we ate while walking through a local clothes market. Walking back to my island, Gezira/Zamalek, I realized what a pitiful excuse that was for Christmas Eve dinner, so I went to the French restaurant/deli Maison Thomas and splurged on a four dollar ($4!!) ham panino. This is one of the only places you can get ham in Cairo.

On Christmas Day we had an unexpected “present” – RAIN! It was only the second time it has rained since I arrived in August, and of course it had to rain on Christmas day. I was invited out to lunch with one of the other interns and his visiting family members, where I had a huge one-pound burger, and then returned to call home and talk to everyone gathered at my house. I made a very simply pasta dish for a quick late dinner because I was still full from my gigantic burger and because we were leaving in the morning for Dahab.

The guidebooks say that the trip from Cairo to Dahab takes about 6-8 hours by public bus, but we left around 7:15 am and arrived just after 6 pm – nearly 11 hours!

mosaic sign outside Dahab

After a very mediocre and cheap dinner, we slept from 8 pm to midnight then went out for about an hour and a half before returning and passing out for the next ten hours. We were staying at a place called Auski Camp in a private double room for under 4 dollars a night. Something about being stuck on a public bus for that long is very draining, but Dahab is the kind of place you go to relax and not do very much at all. When we finally managed to get out of our room, we went to a seaside restaurant called Penguin Village.

@Penguin Village, with the Red Sea and Saudi Arabia in the background

This is the kind of place where you can eat a meal and hang out for 3 hours afterward without being bothered - which is what we did, until we were hungry again and got pizza for lunch! Dahab’s beachfront is lined with these kinds of places, and if you know where to go, you can eat cheaply.

After lunch we walked down to the peninsula to the south and took pictures of the sun setting behind the mountains.

One of a set of HDR images I made here, but it didn't come out like I was hoping

This is from one of the more expensive places. They all had this display of fresh fish and tried very hard to lure tourists into their restaurants where they would promptly overcharge them.

Rob and I went to “Quickly Restaurant” for dinner, which was our best find of the trip. It was very cheap ($3-4 for a main course and a drink), BYOB (MUCH different from Cairo), and the service was fantastic. We hung out there for a few hours and then wandered around to check out Dahab at night, then went to bed.

Eurotrip - Rome Part 5 - The Colosseum

2009-01-03T20:44:00.001+02:00

Exterior of the Colosseum

Interior of the Colosseum. This made me want to watch Gladiator...which I did when I returned to Cairo.

The Arch of Constantine, located just outside the Colosseum

Later on, Amy and I went out to dinner at a restaurant called "Est! Est!! Est!!!" and I had the best pizza of my life - of the Four Cheese variety - and a delicious house wine.

To cap off our long day (all of these posts from Rome were from the same day!), we went to an Irish sports bar about ten minutes away from the hostel to watch El Clasico, the FC Barcelona vs. Real Madrid soccer match. I wore my cheap Barca jersey from Chile and soon after we got to the bar, a few Spanish fans of Barca filed in. In the end there were about four or five Barca fans and one Madrid fan.

El Clasico is usually a tightly-contested match (they play twice a year, once in each city), no matter how each team had been playing for the past few games. So despite the fact that Barca was clear ahead of the table and Madrid was sitting slightly above the middle of the pack and struggling, no one was anticipating an easy win for the good guys. It turned out to be a defensive game for the most part, with a few good chances here and there, but it wasn't until seven minutes remaining in the game that Samuel Eto'o wobbled in a cross to the back of the net to put Barca up 1-0.

Leo Messi followed this with a beautiful chip over the goalie in injury time to get to the final score of 2-0 for Barca.

The next day I got on the train to the airport and flew back to Cairo. I had an amazing trip, even if the Egyptian Pound - Euro conversion rate robbed me throughout the trip. I had the opportunity to catch up with three friends I see more of outside the U.S. than I do in it, including two I hadn't seen in two and a half years. I also got a brief visit with relatives in Lyon. It was a much needed breath of fresh air from the pollution and waste of Cairo.

This is a view of my island from the plane. I marked where I live. It's good to be home...sort of.

Eurotrip - Rome Part 4

2009-01-03T20:24:00.002+02:00

The Pantheon in Rome. "Agrippa made this...bla bla bla" Amazing inside of the dome

Another church, another fantastic ceiling!

HDR of the Trevi Fountain. Cool but WAY too many tourists here.

Palatine Hill, just next to the Roman Forum and the Colosseum

Overlooking the Roman Forum from the edge of Palatine Hill

Eurotrip - Rome Part 3

2009-01-03T15:58:00.002+02:00

After leaving the Vatican, we walked across to the Tiber, where there was a lot of commotion. Upon investigation, we discovered that the heavy rains throughout Italy had caused massive flooding of the river and caused this end result:

Debris and a houseboat or two smashed up against one of the bridges spanning the Tiber. You can see Castel Sant'Angelo in the background. There was police tape everywhere and helicopters circling above. Eventually we got bored and continued along.

One of the fountains in the Piazza Navona

My artsy Depth of Field shot of the Obelisk and the Fountain of the Four Rivers in the Piazza Navona

We came across this bike with the smashed front tire and I thought it would make a good picture.

Eurotrip - Rome - On Top of the World (or St. Peter's Basilica)

2009-01-03T14:52:00.005+02:00

After seeing the inside, we wanted to see the view from the top. A short elevator ride took us up to the roof and the base of the cupola. After that, it was 320 zigzagging, winding stairs up to the top.

Also a trivia note - for those of you who have read the Dan Brown book "Angels and Demons," this is where the camerlengo makes his final appearance.

The final set of stairs wind up around and follow the curvature of the dome to the point that you have to walk diagonally because it's no longer possible to stand up straight.

Cameras cannot capture this breathtaking sight of early morning Rome from the top of the Basilica. From the Tiber snaking along dissecting the city to the hundreds of churches punctuating the hazy skyline, this was one of the coolest things I've seen on my many travels, ranking right up there with the sunrise on Mt. Sinai.

The early morning mist over Rome.

The enormous dome's shadow on the opposite side

After descending down the opposite side, we visited the Tombs of the Popes (photos prohibited inside). Much like my experience in St. Katherine's Monastery, there was something incredibly moving about this place. Perhaps it was because of the enormous power wielded by the men buried there and how much their decisions affected the course of world history, or because of how much people loved the popes that reigned during their lifetime.

People were falling on their knees to pray in front of the tomb of John Paul II, and being there, it was easy to understand why. The reason I was on vacation in the first place was because Muslims were on the Eid Al-Adha, and some were completing their lifetime achievements of the pilgrimage to Mecca, which is one of the five pillars of Islam. For the people praying in front of John Paul II's tomb here in Rome, it must have been the culmination of their own pilgrimage. This was a man who had reigned since 1978 and was enormously popular, as evidenced by his funeral procession in 2005. For many devout Catholics under 40, this was the only Pope they had ever known, and the opportunity to come and pay their respects must have been very moving.

Eurotrip - Rome Part 1 - St. Peter's Basilica

2009-01-03T14:21:00.002+02:00

After spending three months surrounded by the rich religious histories of Cairo and the Sinai, it was only natural that I continue my religious history tour of the world by taking my atheistic beliefs to Rome.

It was strange to see the difference between Italians outside and inside Rome. My impression in the countryside was that Italians were very homogeneous – not to be culturally insensitive, but they all pretty much looked like the stereotypical Italian. But inside Rome, it was completely different; it’s a bit strange to hear Asians speaking fluent Italian.

I dropped my stuff off at the hostel and after an hour or two, met up with my friend Amy, another Dutch friend from my Costa Rica trip. We went out to the Trastevere to eat pasta and then went out barhopping for a little while, but went to bed not too late because we had a huge day ahead of us.

On Saturday December 13, we awoke early for a massively ambitious whirlwind walking tour of Rome. Amy and I hopped on the metro over to Vatican City, in the Northwest part of Rome. I have a lot of pictures from all of the places we visited in Rome, so I’m just going to post them and explain them in the captions.

HDR of the main plaza in the Vatican

Outside St. Peter's Basilica

St. Peter's Basilica was our first stop. It was jaw-droppingly beautiful and one of the highlights of my whole trip. I didn't take that many pictures because I was in shock by how large and detailed it was, and I wanted to appreciate it through my eyes instead of through the lens. Definitely a must-see for anyone going to Rome.

Apparently you can fit the Statue of Liberty underneath the dome of St. Peter's Basilica, with plenty of space to spare.

Eurotrip - San Martino to Rome

2009-01-03T13:46:00.001+02:00

After the completion of the Sphinx, we half-heartedly turned our attention toward building the first pyramid. We rolled four large snowballs into one area and tried to slightly mold them together in the form of a pyramid, but it turned out to be considerably harder than it looked.

Our very half-hearted attempt at a pyramid. We built the sphinx too large anyway if we were going to do the whole thing to scale because the pyramids would have had to been MASSIVE.

At this point we were pretty much soaked through from the drizzle so we gave up and went inside to get dry.

That night we watched some crazy British detective shows and, later on, Into the Wild, but none of us really had the attention span to focus on the movie, so we ended up playing a drinking game with tiddlywinks and terrible Italian liquor. Much more fun and less depressing than the movie!

In the morning, it was off to the Asti station to catch a train to Rome.

Early morning view from the drive to the train station

Waiting for my train...

I had a six and a half hour ride along the Mediterranean and a 6-person car to myself. "M'Scuzi!"

Eurotrip - San Martino Alfieri, Italy - Snow Sphinx!

2009-01-03T01:21:00.004+02:00

After seeing Eataly, I was off to catch my third train of the day, from Turin to Asti. Barbara, a Dutch friend of mine that I had met in Costa Rica two years ago, and her friend Mic picked me up at the Asti train station and we drove to Mic’s house in the snowy Italian wine hills of San Martino Alfieri.

The house is quite isolated up in the hills – Mic has only one Italian neighbor with whom communication is quite difficult. I was planning on going to Florence for a very brief visit on Thursday but I had had just about enough of Italian trains and needed a train-free day to unwind, so I stayed an extra day in San Martino.

We went to the supermarket to buy gloves and food for our two days there. Instead of the more adventurous sliced shark meat – see pic below - we chose ham and cheese sandwiches for lunch and pasta for dinner.

People were literally coming up to the counter and getting slices of shark meat

After eating, we considered our options for possible activities. There were multiple feet of snow on the ground, but it was drizzling rather steadily, making for the best packing snow I have ever seen. So, very content to not act our age, we decided to build a snowman. After some deliberation, we modified our plan from building a simple snowman with corncob pipe to the rather ambitious plan of a to-scale recreation of the ENTIRE GIZA PLATEAU (the Sphinx and the three pyramids)!

Being the most detailed and requiring the most work, we started with the Sphinx.

I mentioned the ideal snow conditions before, but I had no idea how much it would affect our building process. I started with a snowball the size of a fist, and after rolling it downhill 30 feet or so, it got so big and heavy that it was literally absorbing all of the snow in front of it to the point that it was ripping up the grass AND the mud underneath the grass, and becoming a dirty snow-mud-grass ball.

The second problem was that if we started too far away from our allotted area for the Sphinx, it got to the point where the snowball was simply too heavy to roll, and we had to cut it down or try to slide it by using a shovel as a sled, as was the case in the next picture.

Slowly the Sphinx began to take shape, and once the body was in place, we had to heave a giant snowball on top for the head.

Mic and Barbara beginning to carve out the face of the Sphinx

The final result! The lighting was horrific for photos but you get the idea.

Eurotrip - Turin - More Snapshots of Eataly

2008-12-30T19:01:00.003+02:00

Tim and Nellie would have loved it here. The store is affiliated with the "Slow Food" movement, which is kind of like the antithesis of Fast Food, and emphasizes the use and consumption of local products.

The wine and beer cellar was impressive. I bought one bottle of Italian wine because I had already spent a good amount of money on this trip and I was only about halfway through.

You can fill up your own bottles of wine from these kegs.

This is only a small part of it, but the bread selection was varied and fantastic.

They even sell dates from Siwa, Egypt in this store!

I ended up buying a bottle of wine, a packet of large breadsticks, and a jar of authentic Italian pesto. Definitely worth the trip outside Turin if you are already there!

Eurotrip - Turin Part 4 - Eataly

2008-12-30T13:49:00.004+02:00

One of the things that got me interested in visiting Turin in the first place was this article.

Eataly, the health food store mentioned in the article, is a huge wine, cheese, pasta and produce store 20 minutes outside the center of Turin.

This is just a tiny representation of the shelves and shelves of different types of pasta they had.

Produce and one of the many restaurants scattered throughout the store.

Also impressive was the cheese cellar, although the smell was not.

Eurotrip - Turin Part 3 - More Shots from the Cinema Museum

2008-12-30T13:28:00.001+02:00

This is the large main room of the museum. There were two large screens and many other smaller screens scattered throughout this room, and as you can see, many comfortable recliners to lie back and watch the films.

Another interestingly designed room inside the museum

Storyboard from Star Wars

This is the view from the top of the spire of the building. On a clear day, the view would have been incredible. A clear day, this was not.

Eurotrip - Turin Part 2 Cinema Museum

2008-12-30T13:18:00.001+02:00

My first stop in Turin was the National Museum of Cinema, a massive five-level exhibition about all the different facets of cinema, from screenplays to acting to directing to editing. The museum takes up the bottom floors of one of the city’s most famous buildings, the Mole Antonelliana, which was built in the mid-19th century and is topped by a spire that punctuates the skyline and provides great views of the city. More on this in a minute.

Although it was fantastic, it wasn’t the museum’s content that impressed me, but rather the layout and design of the place. Rooms were stylized to mimic the atmosphere of each film being shown inside them. For instance:

The Western being shown inside a bar complete with overturned stools and broken bottles.

There was an Italian comedy playing in this room in which the main characters were sitting around a dinner table on toilets instead of chairs, hence the seating here.

This guy made me jump at least a foot in the air. There is a war film involving fighter pilots playing in front of him, and I guess there is a motion sensor directly where the viewer stands because after about 3 seconds of watching the movie, this guy slowly rotates around in his chair then suddenly stops, staring directly at the viewer. Obviously it wasn’t a real person, but I was not expecting it to be an alien head! Very spooky.

For the romantic movie room they had this bed with red pillows and sheets and a screen suspended above it.

Eurotrip - Turin Part 1

2008-12-30T13:12:00.001+02:00

After traveling across the snowy Alps, I finally arrived in Turin in the early afternoon on Wednesday. Turin seems like it would be a wonderful place on a warm, summer afternoon; unfortunately, I arrived on the rainy, miserable day of December 10th. As the cheery, helpful women in the Turin information stand put it, “You picked the worst day to come to Turin!” Even though the weather was bad, it was a lot of fun getting off the beaten path and going to a non-touristy city (more than a few people in Rome asked me later, “Turin?? Why did you go to Turin??”).

One of Turin's attractions is its Egyptian museum, "home to the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts outside Cairo." So what? I live in Cairo.

Cold, wet, mucky, dreary day in Turin

selling umbrellas

One of Turin's main plazas

Eurotrip - Lyon to Turin

2008-12-30T11:16:00.001+02:00

On Tuesday, I was beat from running around Europe taking hundreds of photos and seeing as much as possible so I caught up on sleep and helped my aunt pick out a Christmas tree. That night we had my favorite French dinner, raclette, and then it was off to bed to catch an early train to Italy the next day.

My travels between Lyon and my ultimate destination of Asti, Italy on Wednesday were filled with interesting encounters. First, I rode a bus through the early morning snow to the Part Dieu station in downtown Lyon. I got a chance to practice my French (here? station? Part Dieu?) with a few of the other passengers.

Part Dieu train station in Lyon.

In the train station in Lyon, I still had a bit of time before the departure of my delayed train, so after getting yelled at for reading one page short of the entire International Herald Tribune at a newsstand, I ambled over to survey the food options.

I’m standing there debating whether to say, “Je voudrais un croissant,” (see, I didn’t actually want a croissant, I just wanted to use the FOTC line), when I hear someone behind me ask me a question in French. Not understanding, I turn around and standing around me are five HUGE guys, three of them dressed in army fatigues and assault rifles and two of them dressed in police uniforms with side-arms. Keep in mind this is at 7:30 AM, and years of learning Spanish and now Arabic has whittled my 10th grade French down to next to nothing.

I motion that I don’t understand, and one of them repeats the question in accented English.
“Do you smoke weed?” He asks, eyeing me suspiciously.
“What? No,” I respond.
He persists with the questioning. “Have you ever smoked weed?”
“No,” I say, growing irritated.
Another guy gets in on the action. “When was the last time you smoked weed?”
To this, I lift up my jacket, sweatshirt and t-shirt and proudly show off my lung scar to each one of them, one by one.
“Look. My lung collapsed! I don’t smoke.”
“What are you carrying in the bag?” One of the cops asks, not impressed by my bullet-shaped scar.
“Clothes, books, and a camera. I’m traveling across southern Europe.”

He makes a motion to reach for my bag, at which point I put it on the ground and start pulling out my camera, books, snacks, and clothes, scattering them across the floor of the train station.

It’s possible they expected either a fight or flight reaction, but upon realizing I was going to cooperate, they lost interest and walked away. I don’t know if I look like the stereotypical 22-year-old French drug runner, but it seems like they should have better things to do than stopping me at 7:30 in the morning to ask me about my clearly prolific pot-smoking habits.

View from the train, crossing the Alps

The first train took me from Lyon to Chambery, France, where I had to transfer to the second train to Turin, Italy. It was on this train that I had my next interesting encounter.

My assigned seat put me next to a Senegalese woman in her mid- to late-30s. We started chatting about Turin, she in limited English and me in (very) limited French, which was her final destination as well. After more and more probing questions, I began to notice that this was not simply a social conversation. Finally, when she asked me what I was doing that night and what hotel I was staying in, I came to the realization that she was offering me her professional services as a lady of the night. It was just about that time I put in my headphones, turned toward the window and went to sleep.

Out the window of the train

Chambery train station

Eurotrip - Lyon, France Part 3

2008-12-25T22:40:00.003+02:00

Some more photos from the festival. See below for more text

Another video show projected onto a building as part of the festival of lights

Lit up ferris wheel in Lyon

the house cat, Carlos, making himself quuuuuiiiite comfortable on my fleece jacket

I have quite a few funny stories from this leg of the trip, but they (and the Italy leg of the trip) will have to wait until I return from my post-Christmas trip to the Red Sea.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Eurotrip - Lyon, France Part 2

2008-12-25T20:53:00.003+02:00

As part of the festival, many of the historic buildings in central Lyon were lit up by various light shows and exhibitions. My camera was having strange auto-focusing issues, but here are my best shots. Keep in mind that despite my love affair with High Dynamic Range images, NONE of these pictures are HDRIs. This is how they actually looked.

A basilica all lit up with neon strobe lights

This was the most mentally stimulating part of the whole festival, a narrated light show on the four historic buildings in the square. People were packed in shoulder to shoulder in the frigid Lyon night, but it didn't even matter, because the show was so spectacular it was almost as if you didn't notice the cold. Except you did.

Again, not an HDR...incredible colors

This was the strangest of the exhibits...four figures lit up with different colors in a very isolated little square. Not too many people at this one!

Flying fish rotating around a fountain

Following the light show we went to a bouchon, a traditional restaurant in Lyon that specializes in strange dishes (like cow liver).

Eurotrip - Lyon, France Part 1

2008-12-25T20:42:00.002+02:00

I arrived in Lyon, France (where my aunt and uncle live) on Monday, the last day of the Fête des Lumières (the Festival of Lights). The festival is a tribute to the Virgin Mary in thanks for saving Lyon from a terrible plague in the year 1643…or something to that effect.

My aunt, uncle and I rode the tram to the top of a hill above Lyon while waiting for the festival to start. There were a few interesting things on top of the hill, including a large church, a statue of Mary, and a Roman amphitheater (I can’t seem to avoid these, no matter where I go! It’s a reminder of how powerful and widespread the Holy Roman Empire once was).

The large church and gold statue on top of the hill

View of Lyon from the hill

Another city, another Roman amphitheater

This picture is just to mess with your minds. Although this looks pretty convincing, it is actually an intricately detailed miniature display in a window. Those chairs were less than two inches high!

Eurotrip - Barcelona Part 6

2008-12-25T13:03:00.002+02:00

After Tibidabo, we wandered around Las Ramblas and the Barrio Gotico for a while. I really wanted to go to a Chilean restaurant that I had heard about right near the port, but it was mysteriously boarded up, so we ended up back at the bocadillo place.

HDR of Gaudi's Casa Batllo at night

The Catalan people are incredibly patient. Numerous times I saw huge groups of people waiting for the cross light to change to walk even though there were no cars within miles! It struck me as very bizarre

I figured I had to see Gaudi's Parc Guel before I left, so I headed over there Monday morning before my flight to catch the sunrise, and then hopped on the “futuristic” train to the airport to Easyjet it over to Lyon.

HDR of Parc Guel at 7:50 AM

I thought the sun had already risen when it suddenly appeared in the one spot of the sky not blanketed by clouds. My big camera's battery was dead so I shot this with my little Kodak

I really felt at home here. Compared to the insanity that often comes with living in Cairo, Barca felt very familiar, though I did have the advantages of a working knowledge of Spanish and a great tour guide and fellow photo junkie to explore Barcelona with me.

Next stop: Lyon, France.

Eurotrip - Barcelona Part 5

2008-12-25T12:40:00.001+02:00

On Sunday, Barcelona decided to be even moodier. Eda and I took 3 different forms of transportation – metro, tram and funicular – up to the top of Tibidabo (a mountain north of Barcelona). In Latin, tibi dabo means “I will give it you,” and the legend is that the devil tried to tempt Jesus Christ with the glory of the whole world if Jesus would worship him.

This is an HDR of a building at the base of the tram.

A large church, the Temple de Sagrat Cor, sits on top of Tibidabo. I saw this church in the distance while wandering around near the Nou Camp on Friday (all the way across Barcelona), and it was even more impressive from up close. The picture a little farther down shows a night view of the church from downtown Barca.

The second floor balcony of the church would have provided great views of Barcelona if the weather had been better. There’s also a huge 5-tier amusement park wrapped around the base of the church, but it was so windy and cold I can’t see how the kids there could have had much fun.

Reflection of the tram

At the top of Tibidabo with Eda

During our descent from Tibidabo, we stopped at the CosmoCaixa, a fairly new interactive science museum. One day a month, all museums in Barcelona are free and luckily, today was that day. CosmoCaixa was kind of like the Liberty Science Center except more modern and awesome.

If his mother had been nearby, I don’t think she would have been too happy about him licking this huge block of ice!
I saw him do it the first time and immediately got my camera ready. I instinctively knew that, being a kid, he would be curious enough to do it again.

The night view of the lit up church on Tibidabo from Las Ramblas

Eurotrip - Barcelona Part 4 FC Barca vs. Valencia

2008-12-23T20:52:00.001+02:00

Another lifetime goal can be checked off the list: going to an FC Barcelona home game at the Nou Camp.

On Saturday night, Eda and I went to the FC Barcelona vs. Valencia soccer game and sat 15 rows back from the field, directly behind a nice, talkative - if intoxicated - older Irish gentleman. He was explaining how he had bet his friend 200 Euros on the outcome of the match, but we couldn’t understand if the bet was that the final score would be 2-2, or just that 4 goals would be scored. He said that if he correctly predicted the end result, he would be up 600 Euros, otherwise he would come out even. Hmm, sounds to me like 60% of the time, his math works EVERY time. And Brian, that doesn't make any sense.

In front of the field before the game started

Unfurling of the FCB flag at the start of the game...couldn't quite capture it with my point and shoot camera

Here is the opening song:

From Eurotrip - Barcelona Part 3 - FC Barcelona vs. Valencia at the Nou Camp

The game itself was exciting for the first half, after which Barca was up 2-0. The second half was more subdued, even though Barca added 2 more goals as the Valencia players become increasingly frustrated (5 yellow cards!). It was clear by halftime that Barca was in control and wasn’t going to let the game slip away.

Thierry Henry had a fantastic game, scoring a hat trick.

And the song and celebrations at the end:

From Eurotrip - Barcelona Part 3 - FC Barcelona vs. Valencia at the Nou Camp

Barca merchandise on sale after the game

The strange thing is that the Irish guy in front of us never returned from halftime so we never knew if he won his bet or not. He probably got kidnapped by his bookie or something.

It wasn’t a thrilling 4-3 win or anything, but one can’t complain when a favorite team dominates a good opponent, let alone the 3rd best team in the league on points (Barca is 1st!)

Eurotrip - Barcelona Part 3

2008-12-23T20:35:00.004+02:00

The next stop was the fort on top of the other side of the hill. The views would have been great if Barcelona wasn't being "moody" as Eda put it.

Pseudo-HDR I made of the fort.

Me on top of one of the defensive emplacements.

Shallow Depth of Field photo of the flowers with Barca in the background

After wandering around Montjuic for much of the middle of the day, we headed downtown to get tapas that were delicious (if a bit pricey). After that we saw the Palau de la Musica, which is not a Gaudi creation but still very intriguing.

Palau de la Musica Catalana

After this, it was a quick trip back to watch Eurotrip (it had to be done!) and to get fully insulated from the cold before the FC Barca game at 10 pm!

Eurotrip - Barcelona Part 2

2008-12-23T20:24:00.001+02:00

Saturday morning los Mexicanos, Eda and I went to see Sagrada Familia, the very much under-construction church of Anton Gaudi’s design.

Here is my artsy, but fake shallow depth of field shot of Gaudi's Sagrada Familia. My lens cant do DOF this shallow so I had to cheat a bit in picasa

Cool part of the Sagrada Familia

Following that, we ventured up Montjuic, a hill sort of in the center of Barcelona.

One of the things to see on Montjuic is the Olympic Stadium from the 1992 Games. This is also where RCD espanyol, another Primera Liga team plays, but compared to the Nou Camp, which is decked out in FC Barca regalia, their presence there seems to be hardly noted.

Here is an HDR I made at the top of Montjuic. We thought that spaceship-type thing was going to be something really fascinating, but it turned out to be a communications tower. Lame.

Eurotrip - Barcelona Part 1

2008-12-20T19:52:00.002+02:00

I flew from Cairo to Barcelona, Spain on December 5th and my honest, initial reaction when I stepped off the plane was that I had entered some kind of futuristic world where everything was unnaturally clean, things ran on time, and stuff worked the way they were supposed to.

I also – quite strangely – had the urge to talk to people in Spanish and tell them I had just come from Cairo, as if I had survived some sort of difficult life test (which in a way I guess I had).

This is somewhere over the north coast of Africa

Immediately off the plane I headed for the Nou Camp, the stadium of my favorite soccer team, FC Barcelona. There was a tour, a 3D movie (Nora and Dino – it wasn’t quite as good as the one in La Boca!), and a museum next to the stadium.

Another example of my adjustment to the Cairo way of life – I’m crossing the street to get to the stadium and there’s a car coming in my direction. I unconsciously gauge the distance of the car and how fast it’s going and figure it will pass me before I get to that point if I don’t change my own pace. The driver sees me, and this is where it gets interesting.

In Cairo, the driver would have floored it towards me, either hoping to get by me so that I did not inconvenience him on his route, or to attempt to run me over. But in Barcelona, the driver sees me and slams on his brakes. 20 feet in front of me, just slams on the brakes and motions for me to cross. I seriously was frozen in place for about 5 seconds, unsure of what to do. It didn’t really cross my mind at first that he was being courteous, I was suspicious he was just attempting to line me up for a better angle for human pinball.

But I digress.

The view of the stadium from the press box, which convinced me that being a sports journalist in Barcelona would be amazing

A Barca foosball table, they had all sorts of varieties of these in the museum

This is the Champions League trophy from 2006 which Barca won

The visit to the stadium only got me more excited for the game I would be attending the next day. After seeing the stadium, I hopped on the metro and met up with my friend Eda, who is studying in Barcelona. After wandering Las Ramblas, I had my first ever chicken, tomato, corn, lettuce, cucumber (and fifteen other ingredients I can’t remember) bocadillo at Eda’s favorite little restaurant in the city, and that night we went out to a bar and bumped into some cool Mexican friends of hers. I tend not to sleep much the night before big trips though, so I was pretty beat and turned in early.

Siwa Oasis Part 5

2008-12-20T17:23:00.002+02:00

This next picture is the ancient town of Shali, in the middle of present-day Siwa. It used to be a formidable fortress, but (this is kind of nuts) 3 straight days of rain in 1926 melted much of the salt/rock/mud walls, and people largely abandoned it.

It is really cool walking around inside it at night because they have it all lit up.

This is an HDR from inside Shali.

This requires an explanation. We went out for a fantastic meal and I ordered a very complex smoothie. Apparently the waiter liked my order, because it came back with a heart on it! We found this hilarious

That night after buying some gifts for my Aunt and Uncle, I came across a few Siwans huddled around a ping pong table. I watched for a while and then got involved, playing the 2nd best guy there, and beating him pretty handily (21-14, 21-5) once I got the hang of the table. Then i played the champ and got pretty much obliterated. The dude was playing with the worse paddle, and he still could spin it so it stopped on a dime. The thing was, I couldn't even see him spinning it, so sometimes it would come at me full speed, and sometimes it would just rise straight up. I can't tell you how many times I feebly whiffed at the ball and missed. It was incredibly fun though, and there probably aren't too many people that can say they've played ping pong with a Siwan!

On the way back from Siwa we took a public bus to Marsa Matruh and then bartered with a microbus driver to bring us and 5 girls we had met in Siwa back to Cairo. As you can see from the picture above, it was a looooong trip. The whole weekend in Siwa was fantastic though. It was good to get into clean air and the much more laid-back lifestyle in Siwa.

Siwa Oasis Part 4

2008-12-20T17:21:00.003+02:00

It was difficult capturing the scope of the desert, so I tried to choose pictures that did that somewhat, like this next one with the other jeep about to plunge down a massive sand dune. Inside that jeep were a bunch of Korean tourists. We know this because they said "Annyong" to our tour guide! True story.

Here is a fossilized fish. Weird to think that this all used to be underwater.

Ahmed, our driver

Finally, we headed over to one of the highest dunes to have tea and watch the sunset.

Racing down the dune

The two tour guides silhouetted against the setting sun

Siwa Oasis Part 3

2008-12-20T17:20:00.003+02:00

The second day at Siwa we woke up mid-morning and headed “downtown” to the local market which was almost over as we arrived. We had to wait until our shoes were almost dry, so we got a bit of a late start.

Here is the market as it is ending

We returned to Cleopatra’s Spring to swim and eat, and in the afternoon we took up the offer of the guide at the hotel and joined the expedition out into Bir Wahed, the Great Sand Sea.

The interns and our tour guide, Ahmed out in the Great Sand Sea

Basically this trip was just an excuse for Ahmed to do donuts and drive down nearly vertical walls of sand.
I'm putting up a lot of pictures of this trip so I'll mostly let them speak for themselves.

Our first stop in the desert was this cold (correction: FREEZING) water lake. It was so cold I didn’t want to just wade in, so I ran full speed into the lake. Once my body got numb it wasn’t that bad!

Thankfully, our next stop was the nearby sulfurous hot spring. Then it was off to see fossils in the desert.

The interns in the Jeep driving through the desert

Siwa Oasis Part 2 - The Salt Marsh Debacle

2008-12-20T16:44:00.002+02:00

At this point it was mid-afternoon, and I wanted to catch the sunset over the western lake of Siwa at the edge of town, so we headed out that way. Upon reaching the outskirts, it seemed like there were only 20-30 minutes left before the sunset and we were still a few kilometers away, so we were faced with a dilemma. We could either follow the roundabout road, or go straight ahead through the palm grove. Emboldened by our earlier success traipsing through the grove, we (rather unfortunately) chose the latter.

While our female companions returned to town to rent bikes, Corey, Andrew and I forged on ahead through the grove. The shortest distance between two points, after all, is a straight line. This straight line, however, consisted of miles of disorienting palm groves, streams, dried salt flats that seemed like alien landscapes, and some sort of irrigated field with planted crops (you can see the route we took as the line I made on the map of my trip in the previous post). Every time we saw a clearing in the grove, we were expecting to see the lake, but it would just end up being a salt flat. So we continued crunching across the strange terrain, in the direction of the next palm grove and hopefully eventually the lake. Once we even had to vault ourselves across a ten foot drop over a stream.

Alien terrain! Salt/mud flat

Finally, after an unbelievably long trek, we reached the final clearing and could see the lake a few hundred yards ahead. Relieved we had made it in time for sunset, we snapped some photos while laughing and joking about the journey we had taken to get there.

Although it doesn't look like it, this is an HDR - there was no way to capture the light on the ditch as well as the setting sun within the normal exposure limits.

As the sun slipped behind the hills in the distance, we realized we had to find a better way back, or we would end up lost in the grove.

We started to head south towards the road in the distance, but problems quickly arose. Corey’s right foot slipped beneath the surface, and was immediately drenched in mucky salt water. Profanity ensued.
“This ground is too soft, we should go this way” Andrew said, indicating another direction. But two minutes later his right leg sank into the muck up to his knee. He stepped forward with his left leg to push himself out and the following happened:

Corey and I couldn’t do anything but stand there dying of laughter. The hilarious part was that we knew it was going to happen to us as well – and it certainly did – so we took the opportunity to appreciate each others’ comic misfortune.

As you can see in this picture, I rolled up my jeans to my knees in anticipation of slipping into the mucky salt marsh, but three steps after this, it didn’t make any difference because I slid in almost up to my waist! At times we had to go on all fours to distribute the weight and move forward. It wasn’t quicksand or “quickmuck” so I’m almost positive we weren’t in any real danger. It was just one of those ridiculous situations that’s hilarious while you are with other people, but it would probably elicit panic if you were by yourself.

After a long time we made it to the road, where we bribed a man driving by in a three-wheeled pickup truck-type vehicle to bring us back to town. It felt a little bit like when Tom Hanks gets rescued in Castaway. On this day, Thanksgiving Day, we were quite thankful that this guy drove by, because it would have been a LONG walk back in the dark with heavy pants and shoes caked with mud.

Siwa Oasis Part 1

2008-12-20T16:16:00.005+02:00

For the long Thanksgiving weekend, my fellow interns and I decided to get away from the hustle and bustle of Cairo. Having already celebrated Turkey Day, we boarded an 11-hour overnight public bus to the Siwa Oasis in Egypt’s Western Desert.

Siwa is home to about 25,000 people, and is incredibly isolated from everything else in Egypt. I was skeptical about the bus ride – my last overnight journeys of equal length (flights from NYC to Buenos Aires and Cairo, and the bus ride to Copiapo, Chile) resulted in my zombification for the next 24 hours – but on this one I think I slept for nearly seven hours. The only break in my sleep was a 3 AM bathroom break by the side of the road in the middle of the desert, and the whole time I was praying the bus would not leave me stranded.

The oasis was still stretching and yawning as we pulled into the bus station around 7 AM, where bleary-eyed local men were lined up to send off the men going on the hajj (the pilgrimage to Mecca). We dropped our stuff off at the basic-but-comfortable hotel and set off sightseeing. The first stop was the Mountain of the Dead, which looks cool from the satellite view in Google maps. I made a map of my trip, which you can see below.

View Larger Map

The hill is covered in now-excavated rock tombs, which were also used by the Siwans as shelter when the Italians bombed the oasis during World War II.

The top of the “mountain” provided a great panoramic view of the oasis. You can see from here where the palm trees suddenly end and it becomes barren desert for hundreds of miles.

The funniest thing about this excursion was the class of 15-year-old Egyptian girls from Marsa Matruh (northwestern Egypt) on a field trip. They don’t see many foreigners, so they were very excited to run into us. At first they were keeping their distance, giggling and pointing at us, but within 15 minutes they were coming up and unabashedly snapping pictures of us with their camera phones. Eventually the ones who spoke decent English came over to chitchat.

The rock tombs and part of the group from Marsa Matruh

It was funny mainly because Egyptian girls and women are highly unlikely to interact with foreigners, but every once in a while a situation like this comes along, a kind of confidence in numbers kicks in and they break societal norms. We were just surprised their male teachers/chaperons weren’t doing more to restrain them.

The next stop on our sightseeing adventure was the Temple of the Oracle. We decided to take the most direct route there, straight through the palm grove. Our fearless navigator had a small GPS unit so we knew the general direction in which we needed to go. Nevertheless, it was a bit like that one episode of “Lost” that I watched at Beeler, except without all the houses, guns, picture frames, and mysteries underground smoke monsters (why do they have houses and picture frames on a deserted island?).

After bumbling around for 15 minutes, we ran across an old Siwan man picking dates, who was more than happy to help us find our way out on the other side. This passage through the grove, while successful, gave us a false confidence in our navigational skills. This fact would prove disastrous later on. That, ladies and gentleman, is called foreshadowing!

The orange stems of the dates from the date palms - Siwa is famous for having arguably the best dates in the world!

Alexander the Great crossed the desert in 331 BC to get to this temple to ask the Oracle if he was the son of Zeus.

The next stop was the lone remaining wall of the Temple of Umm Ubayd.

The Siwan governor at the end of the 19th century apparently didn’t care much about the history of the place – he bombed the temple because he needed building materials!

This group of Siwan children was happy to see us as well

By this time, it was the middle of the day, and we were quite hot from wandering around Siwa, so it was a relief to reach Cleopatra’s Spring.

Around since Pharaonic times, the spring was expanded in 1920 when the higher walls were built. We went for a swim and ate delicious calzone-type sandwiches at the little mellow restaurant next to it.

Bait

2008-12-04T21:18:00.002+02:00

Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to put up my pictures from my trip to the Siwa Oasis this past weekend. I'm leaving in 10 hours for Barcelona to begin my 10-day Eurotrip through Spain, France, and Italy.

Until I get back, I'll leave you with my best HDR of the trip and a little taste of the Siwa pictures to come.

This was from the top of Mt. Sinai (back in early October).

My friend took this picture of me getting good shots of the "Great Sea of Sand."

Silhouette shot over the lake at sunset.

Zuweil House Thanksgiving Part 2

2008-11-30T21:05:00.001+02:00

Here are two more HDR shots:

The guys set for carving the three turkeys.

My sweet potatoes with melted marshmallows on top. They came out pretty well, but still didn't taste as good as the usual ones.

Zuweil House Thanksgiving Part 1

2008-11-30T21:02:00.001+02:00

We decided to have an early Thanksgiving dinner because we were planning a trip for the long Thanksgiving weekend. The coordinator of our intern program provided a house owned by a longtime faculty member of AUC right near the Saqqara pyramids, as well as 3 turkeys. Each of the interns contributed some part of the dinner; I made my family's sweet potato recipe with marshmallows.

While waiting for dinner, we went up onto the roof to take pictures of the sunset. I used the opportunity to work on my HDR skills. Here are the results. Pictures of my sweet potato dish after the jump.

Museum Tour of Doqqi, Cairo Part 2

2008-11-30T20:46:00.001+02:00

The second museum we went to in Doqqi was the Mr. and Mrs. Mahmoud Khalil Museum. It was a private collection of art made into a museum after the death of the owners. The collection included many fantastic works of art, including some Renoirs and even a Van Gogh!

Alas, no cameras were allowed inside so I could not visually share with all of you my visit to the museum. Here are pictures I took while walking between the Agricultural Museum and the Khalil Museum.

We find a very colorful street in the center of Doqqi with many fruit stands. It was much less hectic than the ones downtown where cars are flying by, and the danger of being run over is always evident.

This requires an explanation. While we were walking down the sidewalk, we witnessed this transaction, which included a wad of cash for a chainsaw, two axes, a hatchet, and (inside the bag) a long coil of rope. Sketchy!

Here is my first HDR of this interesting bank building.

Second HDR, I really bumped the contrast on this one.

Museum Tour of Doqqi, Cairo Part 1

2008-11-30T20:01:00.000+02:00

A couple weekends ago two of the other interns and I went down to the Agricultural Museum in the Doqqi neighborhood of Cairo (located west of Zamalek on the west bank of the Nile).

The museum supposedly costs 10 piasters (2 cents) to enter, largely because it is so outdated, and it attracts so few visitors, but there was no one there to collect the 2 cents from us so we got in for free. We had to tip the janitor to let us in the more interesting side rooms, but it was well worth it.

This is a wax representation of a "country wedding procession."

"Types of Women from the Western Desert" Ridiculous to find something like this in a museum.

Another plastic/wax figure inside the museum. Not sure what the point of this guy was.

This photo I took outside the museum. The sign asks a valid question!

Obamamania!

2008-11-14T13:36:00.003+02:00

To celebrate the occasion of the election, I went to a bar with a friend after our Arabic class on Tuesday night (midday in the states, I’m 7 hours ahead), and stayed up late monitoring some of the early results.

We woke up early and caught a cab at 5:45 AM to a party thrown by the U.S. Embassy at the Hard Rock Café. We got there about 10 minutes before CNN called the election for Obama, so it was exciting to be awake to see that. I ate a quick breakfast and stayed a while to watch coverage and appreciate the moment. Around 8:30 I walked up along the Nile and caught the bus to work, but I did not get very much done at work – I was too excited and exhausted to do much of anything, so I followed the election results for most of the states (especially for Jim Himes and Al Franken!).

I have been traveling outside the U.S. for a decent part of the last 3 years, and Wednesday – for the first time – I felt proud to respond truthfully when people on the street asked me if I was American. It is truly incredible how Bush completely destroyed our international reputation, but now we know that “America's beacon still burns as bright – tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.” - Barack Obama

Birqash Camel Market Part 2

2008-11-08T17:35:00.002+02:00

Here are some more shots from the camel market.

"Dude, you could totally chop a camel in its hump and drink all its milk off the... off the tip of this thing, man!" - Charlie, ASIP

Birqash Camel Market Part 1

2008-11-08T17:29:00.004+02:00

This past Friday morning we woke up early and caught a cab to the camel market in Birqash, about 25 miles outside Cairo.

Every Friday morning between around 7 and 11 AM, thousands of camels are brought all the way up Egypt to this market to be sold. Some are used as beasts of burden, some as transport, and according to one book, some end up as food on the plates of some of the poorer families of Cairo.

Also, Lonely Planet makes a point of noting that PETA members should probably not make the trip, since the camels are "beaten relentlessly."

But with so many, in such a small place, there really is no other way to keep them in line. It's funny, at the entrance on the right side are the well-behaved camels, many of them on the ground or standing quietly. On the LEFT side are the crazy ones who are in a constant race against the camel herders.

All of the camels (as you'll see in the pictures) have one of their front legs bent at the knee and tied back so that they aren't very mobile. So the herders spend a lot of the time chasing after these camels that are sort of running/sort of hopping off. In an attempt to tame or tire out the rebellious camels, the herders would chase them out of the gate and then back in. However, due to the camel:camel herder ratio this meant that many times a camel would break free of the pack.

About 47 times, I stopped to take a picture and was momentarily oblivious to my surroundings. I would take the picture and then realize that a camel was charging right at me from the side or behind me and I had to pull out my best Adrian Peterson juke and get out of the way. Seriously, this happened more than it should have.

You can see the front leg tied up in this picture.

Coptic Cairo Part 2 (humorous anecdote and pictures from the way back)

2008-11-08T17:15:00.006+02:00

On the way home from Coptic Cairo, I took the metro downtown to get some kushari (delicious, cheap Egyptian dish – it costs about a dollar – consisting of rice, lentils, chickpeas, macaroni, and a topping of Egyptian garlic and vinegar and spicy tomato sauce).
On my way there, I was accosted by a young Egyptian who asked me where I was from. For some reason, I decided not to say Iceland (my typical response), as I had already used it numerous times that day. I humored him and told him I was from New York (close enough). The ensuing conversation went this way, as I walked toward the kushari restaurant and he tagged along uninvited:

Him: I am a student at AUC (where I work).
Me: Yeah?
Him: I study American culture. I lived in Texas.
Me: Oh really? Where did you live in Texas?
Him: Uh…Minnesota.
Me: You lived in Minnesota? Or Texas? Or Minnesota, Texas?
Him: Yes.

Editor’s Note: A Google maps search for Minnesota, Texas found no results.

Apparently he wasn’t expecting me to question his cover story this much. At this point we reached the last intersection before the restaurant. He stopped me and said that the restaurant I was looking for was down the street to the left. I stared at him for a few seconds then looked up the street one block to where I could SEE the restaurant I was going to. Intrigued by what kind of scam I was getting myself into – and, more importantly, in a good mood – I decided to follow him down the street to the left.

About halfway down the block, he stopped and said:
Him: I just remembered, the kushari place is closed until 3:30. Why don’t you come into my store until then?
Me: Where is your store?
Him: It is right here to the left.
Me: Okay, but I have to leave to eat soon.

So we go into the store where he sells typical souvenirs and cologne/perfume. I exchange glances with a redheaded tourist clearly caught in the same trap, and we share a conspiratorial nod. Back to my new friend now, who says this:

Him: I just want to give you my card.
Me: So give me your card.
Him: Please sit down…why won’t you sit?
Me: I’m hungry; I’m going to get food.
Him: Why do you insult my hospitality?

He gives me a look like I just ran over his entire family with an SUV. I laugh and start to walk out of the store, so he runs over and grabs my arm. I whirl around, give him a menacing look, throw his hand off of my arm, and storm out. I laughed about it all the way to the restaurant. Just another day as a blonde-hair blue-eyed American in Cairo.

This was outside of Coptic Cairo, a cool little shop selling lots of old cameras.

The guardians of the Lion Bridge.

An Egyptian family enjoying a picnic in the park on Gezira island.

Coptic Cairo Part 1

2008-11-08T16:40:00.001+02:00

On Saturday the 25th of October, I went down to the Coptic section of Cairo for the first time. The Copts are the Christian population of Cairo (which make up about 10% of the total). This area is also known as Old Cairo (as if the 8th century mosques in Islamic Cairo weren't old enough!).

This was also the site of the Babylon Fortress of the ancient Roman empire (not to be confused with the city of ancient Babylon), which at one point served as a gateway between Upper and Lower Egypt.

This was taken inside a Greek Orthodox chapel inside the Coptic cemetery.

Inside the Convent of St. George, this man was engaging in the "chain-wrapping ritual," an act which symbolizes the persecution suffered by St. George at the hands of the Romans.

Taken inside the Coptic cemetery.

This is the most horrifying tourist-related thing I have seen in Egypt so far. The guide in front was holding a sign above his head with "Rainbow Tours" written on it facing backwards, so that the group of 40-50 tourists could follow him like sheep.

Updates!

2008-11-07T18:31:00.003+02:00

As you can see, I changed the template of the blog. I put the navigation column on the left and stretched out the main column so that I could double the size of the pictures. I like it much better this way.

Soon I will post pictures of my trips to Coptic Cairo and the camel market at Birqash.

Alex Part 4

2008-11-03T22:18:00.001+02:00

All in all it was a great trip, especially considering I didn't spend any money at all over 3 days. Actually that's not true, I bought a Risk game board in Arabic at a rest stop between Cairo and Alexandria, and when I opened it up, instead of soldiers, calvary, and cannons, it had monopoly pieces! I have to say, when we played last week, it was slightly strange to have houses and hotels attacking each other. Anyway, here are the final pictures of the trip to Alexandria.

This is the Montazah palace on the eastern side of Alexandria. It was a former royal palace.

We had dinner at the Four Seasons (VERY FANCY) and they had a ridiculous buffet of delicious foods. I ate so much I actually didn't sleep that well because my stomach hurt, but it was totally worth it. I demanded this picture to be taken because these green cookies were the best dessert I have ever tasted. I took my first bite of the cookie and it literally melted in my mouth. I then demanded everyone at the table get one to try it, which they did, but then I realized that there were no more left. I noted this unfortunate situation to a friend and went back to the table to eat the other desserts. Five minutes later, the waiter shows up and places this plate of two green cookies right next to me, smiles, and walks away. Best waiter ever (besides Luciano at Campo del Fiori, of course!).

Another day, another mosque. This one also had an amazing mihrab, with a digital clock of all the prayer times of the day right next to it.

Here is my second HDR image of the trip. There was a decent sunset on the last night so we were out on the balcony taking pictures. Nice, but it's no Sinai sunrise!

Alex Part 3

2008-11-01T22:18:00.001+02:00

I'm about to blow your (collective) mind. I don't know how many of you have heard of High Dynamic Range (HDR) images, but for those who have not, google-image it right now and then come back.

The eyes/brain can see a much larger dynamic range than cameras can capture, so photographers use HDR to recreate all the detail and then enhance it even further. Basically, the photographer takes 3 exposures of the same subject, with one normally exposed, one underexposed, and one overexposed. A photo editing program then combines the best parts of each exposure into one "super-exposure".

Here is my first fairly successful attempt at making an HDR image:

This is near Pompey's Pillar, another tourist attraction in Alex. The sky is a little too dark, but otherwise I like how it came out.

Pompey's Pillar...but it has nothing to do with the famous Roman

The Roman amphitheater in Alex.

Playing Gladiator in the Roman amphitheater!

Alex Part 2

2008-11-01T21:51:00.000+02:00

Alexandria, known locally as just "Alex," is situated on Egypt's Mediterranean coast and is well known for its incredible seafood. I had the greatest all-seafood meal of my life here, they gave us plate after plate after plate of shrimp, solefish, calamari, and various other types of seafood that I can't remember.

About 2/3 of the way through the meal. More plates would be stacked on top of this before everything was over.

Taken after the seafood meal. "Boat in an Alley"?

After the meal we headed over to one of Alexandria's many coffeehouses/shisha places near the water. This interesting old guy rolled up on his handpedal bike and his kleenex, but interestingly never tried to sell them to us, was just content to sit and watch.

After the old guy pedaled off, this guy rolled up in his fancy car and decided to park RIGHT NEXT TO US on the sidewalk. We were very confused as there were plenty of other empty places to park and yet he chose to nearly run us over to get the perfect spot.

Alexandria Part 1

2008-11-01T21:30:00.002+02:00

I have not been good recently about consistently updating my blog, and I'm a few weeks behind. Earlier this month I had an "Intern Retreat" in Alexandria on the university's tab. Here are some of the highlights:

This is the Qaitbay fortress, built on the site where the famous Alexandria Lighthouse - one of the seven wonders of the world - once stood.

Here is the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina, built near where the old library was. It is an incredible piece of architecture, descending down 11 stories or so, and you can see the view from the top level looking down in the next picture.

I found one of my all-time favorite books inside the library, a 2000 page chinese war epic titled Three Kingdoms.

Bond, James Bond! and Other Adventures

2008-10-24T13:36:00.001+02:00

Right outside the Ibn Tulun mosque is the Gayer-Anderson Museum, named after a British officer stationed in Cairo who had an obscenely fantastic collection of random items. This, however, is not why the museum is famous.

The museum was used as a shooting location for the Bond film "The Spy Who Loved Me." If anyone remembers the scene in which Bond is nearly assassinated by the man in the second floor window while he is distracted by the beautiful girl down below, you may find this room familiar:

This is the viewpoint of the assassin looking down at Bond.

This is taken from where Bond stood, looking up at the second shutter/window on the right, where the attempted assassin was.

After the Gayer-Anderson museum I ambled down a random street in Islamic Cairo, got bothered numerous times, nearly got run over by 6 different vehicles (this is more common than you might imagine), and ended up at the mosques of Al-Rifai and Sultan Hassan.

This is the inside of the mosque of Al-Rifai, which has incredibly high and detailed ceilings.

This is the beautiful mihrab (which indicates the way to Mecca) of Sultan Hassan.

Mosque of Ibn Tulun

2008-10-24T13:15:00.001+02:00

Two weekends ago I went down to the mosque of Ibn Tulun, the Gayer-Anderson museum, and the mosques of Al-Rifai and Sultan Hasssan. It was a fun photo expedition because the mosques and museum were MUCH less touristy than some of the other mosques I had been to.

Ibn Tulun was especially interesting because it was so simple yet powerful. We practically had the mosque to ourselves, which led to some great photo opportunities. These first three pictures are of Ibn Tulun, the third was taken from on top of the minaret.

A GREAT location for a basketball court, with the Citadel in the background. CC vs. OG 2009 here guys?

Eating Pigeon - A Cultural Experience

2008-10-13T21:50:00.000+02:00

After our relaxing visit to the Gulf of Aqaba we were horrifically reintegrated into Cairo culture by being “given the cultural opportunity” to eat pigeon by our Egyptian intern coordinator.

The meat actually wasn’t bad at all, that was the least of your problems. You are expected to eat the bones (which are crunchy but brittle) and consume almost the entire bird. After the first few bones I started to feel very sick. Actually, just looking at this picture makes me sick to my stomach, so I’m going to leave it at that for now. Once was enough!

More Photos from Nuweiba

2008-10-13T21:40:00.002+02:00

Some of the other huts at Rock Sea.

This is our adopted puppy Buddy. He spent most of the four days with us.

This is the multi-purpose Rock Sea Lodge = hang out spot, dining room, snorkeling launch point, board game center, etc.

Nuweiba!

2008-10-13T21:32:00.002+02:00

After the St. Catherine's experience, we were ready for the beach, so off we went to the Rock Sea Resort, on the Gulf of Aqaba.

The type of place where accepted formal dinner attire is no shirt, board shorts and flip flops, Rock Sea is run by a German couple (Michael and Carda) in their fifties who were given a once-in-a-lifetime offer and dove in headfirst.

In the mid-90s, they had traveled down and lived with the Bedouin in the eastern part of the Sinai for 6 months. A few years later, when the Bedouin came under economical and governmental pressure to sell off some of their land, they remembered the likable German family that had stayed with them. Michael got a phone call with an offer to buy a sizable chunk of land on the Gulf of Aqaba (the body of water between Sinai, Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia). The catch was that the offer was on the table for one day only. So the family accepted, packed up their life in Germany, and opened up a basic but comfortable beachside resort just north of the town of Nuweiba. 8 years later, the family is still running the same quirky resort.

In my four days there I spent a total of $55 for food, drink, lodging, and activities. I stayed in a hut 10 feet from the water.

This was my hut.

I snorkeled 5 times for a total of $3. I saw a swordfish, and fought a nasty piece of coral and lost. I repeatedly found Nemo (over and over and over again!) and tried to catch him each time, but to my chagrin, I could not. We even created a large Mancala board into the dirt and played many games.

Here is the mancala board.

Here is my fish dinner from the 2nd night.

And here is the water with good old Saudi Arabia in the background. Everybody wave!

St. Catherine's Monastery Day Two

2008-10-13T21:14:00.001+02:00

After hiking down the mountain (actually, we didn't really use the switchbacks, just ran straight down in about 35 minutes), we went back to the monastery to see the things we had missed the day before.
For instance, the monastery is home to the legendary burning bush (a descendant of the original bush).

The Burning Bush is literally the MOST anti-climactic tourist attraction I have ever been to. Wowoweewaaw, it’s a bush…and it is not on fire.

Taken from the roof of the monastery after we visited the library.

View of the monastery from above.

Literally the craziest part of the whole monastery. They actually put the bones of all the monks that lived there into this house, the Charnel House, just outside the monastery walls, and separate the skulls, arm bones, leg bones, etc into different piles!

Sunrise on Mt. Sinai Part Two

2008-10-13T21:06:00.001+02:00

5:40 AM

group shot at the summit right after sunrise

I still have some editing to do in this (its still in the RAW format), but this is my favorite picture I took this day. It would have been a more powerful image if the isolated guy was the only one in the picture but some things are out of my control. I gotta work with what I have.

This is what the top of Mt. Sinai looks like during the day. I took this on the way down the mountain.

Sunrise on Mt. Sinai

2008-10-13T20:57:00.001+02:00

The sunrise on Mt. Sinai was one of those experiences that pictures and stories can’t truly do justice. No matter how cold I was or how tired I felt, I had a smile on my face and all I could think was that this was one of the most incredible things I had ever seen. I’m going to timestamp each picture from the sunrise to give everyone an idea of how the sky looked. Definitely click on these pictures to see a bigger version.

5:12 AM

5:15 AM, our spot on the rocks

5:30 AM

Finally, at 5:32 AM, the sun peeks over the ridge to the cheers of the frozen crowd.

Climbing Mt. Sinai

2008-10-13T20:43:00.001+02:00

Those of you who know me well know how religious I am (not very!). Given the religious significance attached to St. Katherine’s and Mt. Sinai, however, I cracked open a Bible for the first time since freshman year of college, when it was required reading for a humanities course.
A quick history lesson for those of you as indifferent to religious history as I am. In the book of Exodus, Moses spends 40 days and nights on Mount Sinai, while his followers stay at the base worshipping the golden calf (a false idol!), and he is given the ten commandments and ordered to created the ark of the covenant and the rest of the tabernacle. For those of you already getting bored, THIS IS THE ARK INDIANA JONES IS AFTER IN “Raiders of the Lost ARC.” “Whatever you do…don’t open your eyes!”
At the beginning of the forty days, Moses is commanded by God to climb Mt. Sinai. At this point in the story I fell asleep reading, which was probably a good thing, because I had to wake up 4 hours later to follow in Moses’ footsteps. At 1:00 AM we groggily arose to climb Mt. Sinai.

Sign at the beginning of the hike.

The true residents of the aptly named Camel path. At time they would come out of nowhere in the dark and I nearly got run over, sandwiched, and kicked in the dark (it's hard to see too far ahead when you have to concentrate on the ground in front of you)

Around 1:45 AM we set out on the camel path up Mt. Sinai, and reached the top in around 2 hours. The trail was fairly well established but there was absolutely no light so my flashlight was relied on heavily.

Brett – I almost had a “giant-yoshi at the end of grumble volcano” moment when in the dark I failed to notice a quick switchback leading away from a fairly steep precipice.

After walking for about an hour and a half we reached the plateau before the top, after which there are 750 more steps that need to be climbed. Once at the top, the wind sliced through you no matter how many layers you had on. I had, it seemed, picked an inopportune moment to shave off all my hair! I did bring a winter hat which pretty much saved my life (okay, just the experience). Just after 4:30 we started to see some light coming over the mountains.

this was one of the vendor's huts on the way up

This last picture was taken at 4:45 AM.

Saint Catherine's Part Two

2008-10-13T20:20:00.001+02:00

We headed back to our hotel but still had time to kill before dinner, so Corey and I decided to scale one of the little mountains near our hotel just before sunset. Here are some pictures from that climb.

Here I am on top of this part of of the ridge showing off my newly shaved head.

Captain Morgan with the sunlit ridge in the background.

Cool shot through a gap in the rocks.

The light was fading...

Got back just in time for dinner. After dinner I headed back to my room to read the Bible. SERIOUSLY!

St. Catherine's Monastery Part One

2008-10-13T20:06:00.001+02:00

On Tuesday, we left Cairo early in the morning and headed east. After about an hour of driving, we went through a tunnel under the Suez Canal to reach the Sinai peninsula. The Suez is technically the boundary between Africa and Asia so this was actually an inter-continental vacation. A friend of mine here who had never been out of the U.S. before this trip has now visited a total of two countries on three continents. Wrap your head around that!

After the six hour drive we arrived at St. Catherine’s around 1 PM, dropped our stuff off and wandered over to the famous monastery. For those (most) of you thinking, “what famous monastery?” here is a quick history lesson.
The monastery was built sometime around the middle of the 6th century and sits at the base of Mt. Sinai, in an area sacred to both Christianity and Islam. According to Wikipedia, the full name of the monastery is “The Sacred and Imperial Monastery of the God-Trodden Mount of Sinai” which you have to admit is pretty bad-ass.

The monastery holds the second largest and most important early codices and manuscripts in the world (with only the Vatican Library holding a more important collection). The head of the university press knows the monk in charge of the library so we got to see some of these and we also got to see an old manuscript about Genghis Khan with amazingly detailed illustrations. I couldn’t take pictures inside the library though.

here is the side entrance to the monastery

you can see the full wall of the monastery from this angle

this is the inside of the church, which had amazing paintings and decorations and ancient lamps hanging from every corner of the ceiling. Im not religious but I got chills lighting a candle inside this place. I had to put the fill light to the max in picasa to get anything to show up in this picture which explains the quality.

a view down the hill from the monastery

Pictures of my Apartment

2008-10-12T20:45:00.001+02:00

Here are the pictures of my apartment that I promised oh so long ago. Please keep in mind that this was after I just moved in which would explain the mess...oh come on, who am I kidding it looks like this all the time.

Here is my living room from both sides, my bedroom, and the kitchen.

The Best Burger in the World?

2008-09-27T15:58:00.001+02:00

While trying to decide what to do on Friday I came across an article in Time magazine claiming that Cairo - not any place in the U.S. - was home to the BEST BURGER IN THE WORLD. You can find that article here:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1639839,00.html

The burger place is in the upper-class suburb of Maadi, which is about 30-40 minutes south of where we live. We had been trying to begin a weekly tradition of "Felucca Fridays" - that is, going out on a sailboat on the Nile once a week at sunset to have one peaceful hour to clear the noise, chaos, and pollution of downtown Cairo from our eyes, ears and lungs - so we attempted to bargain with the Felucca captains to provide a sort of "water taxi" for us down the Nile (actually up, since it runs South to North) to our destination.

So we ambled down Corniche Al-Nil (the road that runs along the Nile), where we were hounded relentlessly by these felucca hawkers to get on their "felucca motorboats" which blast Arab music and have crazy blinking neon lights. They were trying to charge us 5 times as much as a simple ride on a sailboat would cost, even BEFORE we brought up the taxi service to Maadi, so we decided to just hop on a train down to Maadi. It was right around iftar-time, so the streets of Cairo were eerily silent, as everyone was busy somewhere else breaking their fast (more on iftar in an upcoming post about Ramadan). In a city of around 16 million people, it was weird to see the subway system completely empty (see picture).

The Metro is the preferred method of transportation for many because it only costs 1 LE (18 cents) to go almost anywhere in the city. Sadly, the closest Metro stop to our apartments is a half hour walk from the very bottom of the island, so we usually take cabs or just walk from downtown.

So off we were to test the theory that Cairo - of all places! - is home to the best burger in the world. Lucille's was right near the metro stop and we quickly felt at home in the nice American diner/restaurant atmosphere (and I'm not talking about Glory Days at 4 AM). We ordered and got our burgers, which were large and delicious, but I was not about to make any dramatic proclamations in say…Time magazine.

The burger

We decided that the author of the article had gotten incredibly sick of Egyptian food, and had been dying for something familiar, and he discovered this delicious (albeit, in my opinion, not world-class) burger. I mean come on, he’s never even been to Burgers, Shakes, and Fries!

Afterwards we headed out over a sketchy bridge and through some back alley marketplaces to get over to the Nile, where we successfully bartered with a felucca guy to take us out for an hour for 40 pounds total (about $2 for each of us).

After the felucca ride we hopped on the subway back to the bottom of Gezira (our island), and walked north through a nice park along the river. Here are some pictures of the Lion Bridge from that park.

Giza Pyramids and the Sphinx Part 2

2008-09-27T15:26:00.002+02:00

After visiting the Solar Boat museum, we hopped on the bus to go the designated "picture taking site" where it is easiest to capture the three pyramids side by side.

Typical tourist shot, but I had to do it.

The Sphinx!

The Pyramids of Giza

2008-09-17T15:10:00.001+02:00

While I was backing up all my old word documents this summer and deciding what I needed to take with me to Cairo and what I could leave behind, I ran across a file I wrote in 6th grade that was sort of a "life to-do list" called “20 Resolutions.”
Number 2 on the list was “keep my room straightened up.” We can leave that one unfinished for now.
Number 8 was “write a book.” Also unfinished.
Number 13 was “stay alive on Friday the 13th.” Apparently this was a big concern back then, and we can cross that off up to this point.
Of course, knowing me, I only made it up to 16 resolutions/goals and left the last four spots blank.
Number 11 however, was to go see the Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx, which I can now successfully cross off the list.

On the morning of Saturday, September 13, I got on a bus to go to the 47th most-popular tourist destination in the world with around 3 million visitors per year...the Pyramids of Giza!
The Faculty Services Committee from my university here organized the trip for new faculty (an exclusive group of which I happen to be a member) for a subsidized cost of 30 Egyptian Pounds (LE) - a little under $6. This was good, because entrance to the pyramids is 50 LE, entrance to the Solar Boat museum (more on this later) is 40 LE, and then we would have had to pay a driver a few hundred to take us around for the day. So this saved me about 150 pounds and we got to go on an air conditioned bus with a professional guide (her side job, she also teaches at the university).

First, we walked up to the Great Pyramid, the Pyramid of Cheops, pictured here.

Angry Camel!

This is a picture of the Solar Boat, which they buried next to the pyramids to ferry the soul to the afterlife.

I guess my reaction to the trip would be this: the Pyramids were big, inconceivably big, even when you are standing next to them and on them. A better testament to their size and grandeur is that when you travel away from them, they don't seem to get any smaller. Even from a tall building in downtown Cairo, on the rare day that the smog isn't so thick that you can actually see the pyramids, they still seem inexplicably large and alien.
As my plane descended through the Cairo smog in August, I glanced out the window and thought to myself, "Hey there are the pyramids," and looked away. Two seconds later a different thought hit me. "HOLY #*@& I JUST SAW THE PYRAMIDS!"

It's hard to believe they are real until you actually touch them, stand on them, climb up the first few blocks, and even after that, in the bus on the way home, you don't really believe it.

Back to the Hyatt

2008-09-15T23:01:00.002+02:00

On Thursday we went back to the Hyatt to have dinner in the revolving restaurant – another dinner on the University’s tab. I went straight from work so I didn’t have my camera. That night we went to the party at the house of a friend of one of the interns from last year, which was pretty fun. Interestingly, they had an ice luge which was effective for about 10 minutes in the Cairo heat (even at midnight).

On Friday we had an intern potluck dinner which we agreed made us all feel very old, but it was good food so no one complained. Went to bed relatively early Friday night because the next day I was going to…

Al-Azhar Park

2008-09-15T22:55:00.001+02:00

On Wednesday we went to Al-Azhar Park, behind the famous mosque. It only cost 3 pounds (less than 60 cents) to get in, and it was a great way to enjoy the hazy smoggy sunset while we ate iftar on top of the hill. Here are the photos:

This is one of my top ten favorite pictures I have ever taken. I just wish it hadn't been so smoggy. I captured that bird perfectly completely by accident, but that happens a lot with photography.
The citadel
The fountain and the citadel.
A view from the top of the hill.

Second Week of Work

2008-09-15T22:50:00.001+02:00

This week of work was nuts because 5000 students all showed up on Sunday and EVERYONE was lost/confused/angry etc. I was in charge of distributing maps and campus floor plans to all of the entrance points on the campus, but it seemed that people still had trouble finding their way around. Also, I interviewed students and wrote my first article about the student reaction to the opening of the new campus.

On Tuesday night we were invited to dinner at the house of the president of the university, David Arnold in honor of the post-doctoral fellows teaching at AUC and the presidential interns (us!). We mingled and whatnot for a while, then all went to get dinner. It turned out my friend Corey and I ended up at a table with a post-doctoral fellow specializing in some crazy pre-biotic science field and the president of our university, David Arnold. It was kind of surreal to be sitting at this table having basically one-on-one face time with a man of such considerable importance and intelligence, but I’m beginning to realize I’m really not in college anymore.

Sufi Whirling Dervishes Show

2008-09-15T22:30:00.001+02:00

The Whirling Dervishes were amazing, but my camera ran out of battery 20 minutes in so I didn't get to shoot as many pictures as I wanted. It was kind of nice though, because I could sit and enjoy it and not have to bother with trying to capture the perfect shot, since they do the same performance twice a week for free and it is just a short cab ride away. I’m definitely going back soon with my fancy camera and getting some quick shutter speed shots and some slow shutter speed shots.

I liked the lighting in this archway

Khan El-Khalili by Night

2008-09-15T22:24:00.003+02:00

Here are some pictures of Khan El-Khalili by night. We went down to see a Sufi whirling dervish show, and I have a few pictures of that in the next post.

This is one of my favorite shots of the trip so far. Simple, nice colors, separation of dynamic subjects in the picture.

Next to one of the old mosques.

Guitars and trinkets for tourists!

Here we are with our Egyptian friend Ahmed eating a simple Egyptian meal for about 25 cents.

Nomad

2008-09-15T22:11:00.001+02:00

On Friday we went to Gold's Gym on the Nile because our intern coordinator is a member there so we got free passes. That night we set out to go to a rooftop bar near downtown, but since no cab driver knew how to get there we ended up at a different rooftop bar, Nomad, which was very cool anyway - very laid-back and the perfect temperature (this only happens in Cairo at midnight or later!)

It was on the tenth floor of a hotel, with a nice breeze and not too many people.

Hyatt Boat Ride Part 2

2008-09-15T22:00:00.001+02:00

The view of the Hyatt from the boat. More on the revolving restaurant at the top next week.

A picture of the first bridge connecting Downtown to the island of Gezia and Zamalek. I took this on the walk back from the Hyatt to the apartments, which was nice at night (took us about 45 minutes) but would have been horrible during the day at 100 degrees.

Iftar on the Hyatt Boat Part 1

2008-09-15T21:53:00.002+02:00

On Thursday night (9/4) we had iftar (iftar is the breaking of the fast, dinner at sundown during Ramadan) on a big ship associated with the Cairo Hyatt to celebrate the completion of our first week of work. Here are some pictures from that trip.

Going up the elevator to the clubhouse on the top floor of the hyatt.
Pictures from the clubhouse on the 40th floor of the Hyatt.
Our own personal Manhattan (Zamalek, where I live). The lower half of the island is all part of a country club that used to be exclusively for British officers, and the upper half holds a lot of embassies and my apartment building.

Now on the dinner boat, we were entertained by a group of musicians who were quick to share their cool hats with us.

First Week of Work!

2008-09-15T21:46:00.002+02:00

I work in an office with 11 women! For the first week of work, I mainly printed out signs and taped them up around campus to try and direct students and faculty where to go.

Here is a picture from the first day of work.

In my haste to update the blog, I forgot to mention my trip to the Egyptian Museum.
The whole experience is hard to describe, it’s a bit overwhelming to be in a place with so much history hastily thrown together in a variety of largely unmarked rooms. Only the Tutankhamen exhibit was easy to take in because the majority of the tour guides were concentrated in that area. Unfortunately the museum charges you for bringing in a camera so I didn’t bring mine. I’ll be going back at some point to see the separate exhibit of the Royal Mummies, which they charge more for.

Back to the Hyatt

2008-09-12T22:58:00.000+02:00

On Friday we had an intern potluck dinner which we agreed made us all feel very old, but it was good food so no one complained. Went to bed relatively early Friday night because the next day I was going to…

More Pics from Felucca Ride

2008-09-08T19:39:00.001+02:00

More pictures from the Felucca Ride

Shopping and a Felucca Ride

2008-09-08T19:34:00.001+02:00

Immediately following the trip to sort through all the old interns' stuff, we took a bus over to Carrefour to do some shopping. However, as it was the Friday afternoon before Ramadan (the work week is Sunday-Thursday here), it was probably the most packed day of the year and there was literally no room to move around. If anyone knows the Rush Hour game where you have to move the cars and trucks around to get the red car out, it was like that but with shopping carts, and on the most complicated level (actually, now that I think about it, a lot of Cairo traffic is like the Rush Hour game, as cars perpetually try to squeeze into impossibly small openings). There were probably 30 checkout lines and all of them had at least 25 people in them at all times.

Two quick anecdotes from this trip:
First, there was a promotion of two 1.5 liter bottles of Pepsi and a bag of chips packaged together for the price of only the Pepsi. There were 8-10 large cardboard boxes filled with these promotional items. We were just pushing our cart trying to find the pasta aisle, when, about 25 feet away from us, the Carrefour employee opened the first box. All of a sudden, people who had been wandering around nearby raced to the boxes and started tearing them to shreds, trying to get the Pepsi and chips inside.
As the swarm grew larger, people were getting trampled and we couldn't see how many boxes were left until suddenly, the crowd dispersed and all that lay on the ground were a few trampled people and the discarded rubble of the cardboard boxes. And it all happened in about 45 seconds.
I don't know how many of you have seen the new Indiana Jones movie, but if you have, and you remember the scene in which the killer ants swarm the guy on the ground and carry him down into their hive, it was a little bit like that. Anyway, it seemed like overkill for a free small bag of chips.

Second, we were steering our carts down the condiments aisle when we saw a guy pick up a bottle of ketchup, pop off the top, stick his pinky in the bottle, lick his pinky, decide he didn't like that brand of ketchup, put the bottle BACK ON THE SHELF, and grab a bottle of another brand of ketchup. We were both incredibly amused and horrified by this, and vowed from then on to check the seals of everything we bought.

Anyway, we had about 45 minutes to do our shopping and all I managed to get was some juice, some pasta, and some peanut butter and jelly, because of the chaos of the pre-Ramadan shopping spree.

Next we hopped on our bus to get on feluccas (sailboats) for a dinner on the Nile with the new staff/faculty of the university. Given that we are the Presidential Interns, we got to ride with President Arnold and his wife Nancy (see picture below). It was very relaxing, and we managed to take home some of the food to eat later in the week.

Old Campus Visit/Dividing up the Intern Stash

2008-08-31T20:40:00.002+02:00

The purpose of the visit to the old campus was to divide up the things that the former interns had left behind for us. For those of you that have seen the "D.B." episode of Always Sunny in Philadelphia, when Charlie and Frank take all the trash, this was just like that, only with 7 people (instead of 2) rooting through all the stuff looking for interesting things to find. I got an old chess board, a few things to put on my shelves, a few items for the kitchen, and a party game.

To make things even better, just like in the aforementioned episode, there was an Ali Baba sword!

The sword was given to the president by some billionaire in the Middle East.
Probably the coolest thing I've ever held. One of the perks of being a presidential intern.

Too bad we didn't get to keep it.

Old Campus Visit

2008-08-31T20:32:00.004+02:00

The Friday after orientation ended we took a bus to the old campus and visited the president's office.

This is the view from my apartment that morning.

This is the marble staircase leading up to the office

Cool wall in the office.

A gift from a Saudi prince to the President. Never been used.

Random Pics from Orientation Week

2008-08-31T20:25:00.001+02:00

This was from the first dinner with all of the Interns at the Four Seasons Hotel (sponsored by AUC, of course).
Millions of candy canes! The view from the rooftop bar of the Nile Hilton, where we went out on Thursday night.
Same, lots of "S"s

The dance floor

Pictures of the New Campus

2008-08-31T20:18:00.002+02:00

These are my first pictures of our Monday orientation at the New Campus. Click on any of them to see them at their full size.

Map of Visitors

2008-08-29T14:57:00.000+02:00

Day One - Misc

2008-08-24T10:02:00.004+03:00

Good to see the Barcelona love extends to Cairo as well.

Wash me?

Next post I will put up pictures of my gigantic apartment.

Cairo Day One - Al-Azhar Mosque

2008-08-24T10:01:00.002+03:00

These pictures are from the Al-Azhar mosque in Cairo next to the Khan El-Khalili. The mosque was built in 975, and the University associated with it is the second oldest surviving university in the world.

Cairo Day One - Ahmed's Underground Spice Tour

2008-08-24T10:00:00.002+03:00

This is Ahmed. After the factory tour and lunch, he took us on the underground spice tour of Khan El-Khalili. This spice shop is actually underneath a large mosque and has probably been around for hundreds of years.

We bought some spices that are apparently (literally) 100 times more expensive in the U.S. I paid the same price for 100 grams of one spice that I would for one gram in the U.S.

Vanilla Steak? Blue Pepper?

Ahmed's Factory Tour

2008-08-24T09:59:00.001+03:00

Immediately following our first experience in one of Cairo's many tourist traps, we decided to jump over to the Egpytian side of the souk, where real Egpytians buy necessary household items (you won't find any replica pyramids or sphinxes here).So I was a little concerned when I turned around and saw the other three interns talking to an Egyptian named Ahmed outside a shop. However, it was immediately clear he wasn't trying to just sucker us for money. He had on nice clothes, he looked fairly clean, and he actually had all of his teeth(as opposed to Abdul, who only had three or four)!
It turned out he was very friendly and helpful, and even though he was supposed to be helping out in his uncle's store, he gave us the underground tour of the Egpytian side of the market, including the factories where they make both the real and fake trinkets that the stores sell in the souk.

This was the first place we went in, the shoe factory

This was the most interesting of the factories - and maybe I should clarify when I say factory, which in most of these cases were one or two men working on tiny, intricate designs by hand in a small 100 square foot room. This guy was the box/board maker, and he used shells and camel bone to make the designs on top of the wood. You can see the large backgammon board on the right side of the picture.

This guy carved animals out of some kind of tusk. In each case, the factories sell the fake things to most of the tourist traps, and the real things to most 5 star hotels. Either way, the original makers of the products are paid only about 1/5 to 1/10 of what they end up being sold for.Ahmed provided quite the learning experience for us on our first day there.

Later on, we ate Egyptian pancakes for lunch, which are like a cross between crepes and calzones, with meat on the inside and vegetables and spices on top.

Cairo Day One - Pictures of Khan El-Khalili

2008-08-24T09:51:00.001+03:00

These are just some more pictures from Khan El-Khalili.

First Full Day in Cairo

2008-08-23T19:40:00.001+03:00

Hello everyone,
I decided to do another blog for my ten-month stay in Cairo, Egypt.

For those of you I haven't been in contact with, I have an internship in the American University in Cairo in the Office of Communications & Marketing. So far, all I know is that I'll be writing articles for the school's various publications and helping out in the office in any way I can.

I wanted to post a bunch of pictures from my first full day in Cairo to give everyone an idea of life in Egypt.

The first place we went was Khan El-Khalili, a souk (market/bazaar) created as early as the 1380s.

This picture is of the Fishawy Cafe, which is famous for having never been closed for the past two centuries (except for Ramadan).

This is the outside of the famous Al-Azhar mosque (more on this later).

In the picture above, we (Lauren and Muriel are two of the six other interns) have just been pulled into one of the tourists traps with Abdul, the shopkeeper. (Just for the record, I knew full well what I was getting into here; i wanted to practice getting out of situations like this while I was with friends and in good spirits, so that I could successfully resolve similar situations on a bad day).
This was a cologne/perfume shop tucked away in a little back alley in Khan El-Khalili. We were walking by when the guy came over and started pestering us, asking what country we were from. I wanted to see what was going to happen so we followed him into the store, where he offered us tea, gave us some samples, then tried to charge us an exorbitant rate for the cologne. I got him down to 1/10 of his initial price. I still probably overpaid a little bit, but it was good practice the first time.

The Blogger site is limiting my posts to only 4 pictures so Day 1 will take us a few posts.